Briefs were addressed to the commission, by Chadwick in support of his contention that Base Ball was developed from the English game of "Rounders," and by his opponents, who claimed a purely American origin for the national game.
The similarity of the two games, Chadwick contended, was shown in the fact that "Rounders" was played by two opposing sides of contestants, on a special field of play, in which a ball was pitched or tossed to an opposing batsman, who endeavored to strike the ball out into the field, far enough to admit of his safely running the round of the bases before the ball could be returned, so as to enable him to score a run, the side scoring the most runs winning the game. This basic principle of "Rounders," Chadwick contended, is identical with the fundamental principle of Base Ball.
Those who maintained the strictly American origin of Base Ball were unwilling to admit a connection with any game of any other country, except in so far as all games of ball have a certain similarity and family relationship. It was pointed out that if the mere tossing or handling of a ball, or striking it with some kind of stick, could be accepted as the origin of our game, it would carry it far back of Anglo-Saxon civilization--beyond Rome, beyond Greece, at least to the palmy days of the Chaldean Empire. It was urged that in the early 'forties of the nineteenth century, when anti-British feeling still ran high, it is most unlikely that a sport of British origin would have been adopted in America. It was recalled that Col. James Lee, who was one of the moving spirits in the original effort to popularize Base Ball in New York City, and an organizer of the Knickerbocker Ball Club in 1845, had asserted that the game of Base Ball was chosen instead of and in opposition to Cricket on the very ground that the former was a purely American game, and because of the then existing prejudice against adopting any game of foreign invention. The champions of this theory of American origin further contended that those who would derive Base Ball from "Rounders" had totally ignored the earlier history of both games, and had been misled by certain modern developments of "Rounders," as more recently played in England, after many of the features of Base Ball had been appropriated by the English game.
